Any discussion of prior art throughout the specification should in no way be considered as an admission that such prior art is widely known or forms part of common general knowledge in the field.
Point of sale terminals are used to identify items presented to the terminal for purchase as part of a purchase transaction. Typically, items are picked up by an operator and passed by an item scanning device that identifies each item by reading an optical code attached to or printed on the item. The time required to perform this type of purchase transaction is determined by the skill of the operator and the amount of time required to pickup and move each item past the item scanning device. Retailers with large, high volume stores, require a large number of point of sale terminals to be able to handle the volume of purchase transactions experienced at peek demand times. Point of sale terminals are expensive and require dedicated floor space large enough to accommodate the point of sale terminal and the area used to operate it including an area for a customer and for an operator if it is an assisted terminal.
One method to reduce the total number of point of sale terminals required by a store is to reduce the time required to identify each item of a purchase transaction. However at some point, reducing the time to identify each item fails to produce a reduction in the total time required to perform a purchase transaction because the items must still be delivered to a bagging area and bagged before the purchase transaction is complete and the next purchase transaction can begin. During at least a portion of the bagging time, the item scanning and payment components of the point of sale terminal are idle.